WeBlog
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle
Architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account "All children, all species, for all time." A tireless proponent of absolute sustainability (with a deadpan sense of humor), he explains his philosophy of "cradle to cradle" design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics. He also shares some of his most inspiring work, including the world's largest green roof (at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan), and the entire sustainable cities he's designing in China.
Labels: architecture, design, sustainability, technology
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
Monday, October 22, 2007
Dwell's Design Leader: Ken Isaacs
From the Dwell Magazine Design Leaders video series.
Architect Ken Isaacs reflects on the innovative projects that defined his career, from the Shoebox House to the Knowledge Box.
Labels: architecture, design, multimedia
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Stasi Chic
When I lived and traveled in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down, I was captivated by the interior design of utilitarian minimalism that pervaded the former East Bloc.Whether in Slovakia or Bulgaria or Moscow, there was something so ubiquitous and clean about the architecture of dictatorship.
From We Make Money Not Art:
Daniel & Geo Fuchs have documented the architectural legacy left by the former GDR’s Ministry for State Security (Stasi), the main security and intelligence organization of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
The Stasi had nearly 90,000 official workers and 170,000 unofficial collaborators in a country with a population of 16 million. The organization was dissolved 18 years later, yet some of these sites have remained practically as they were.
The photographs show the rooms that the Stasi used to interrogate prisoners; prison cells for political prisoners; the offices of the minister for State Security; bunkers; and the files stored by the Stasi Documentation Office in Berlin - endless stacks of protocols generated by control and espionage, division and corruption – witnesses of the total control of a regime that clung to power for over 40 years.
The images are on show at La Virreina in Barcelona until July 1. Images.
Labels: architecture, design, politics
>> READ FULL ARTICLE
